Don has an idea for a building a watch app to service American football referees and discusses with Randy whether the concept is viable for a build. Randy provides the customary ref jokes and insults in addition to playing Devil's Advocate with the idea. In the end, the question arises: Are watches and watch apps really a thing?

Last week's episode about the speed of React development either struck a nerve, had enough keywords for a Google SEO explosion, or involved a prominent member of the React dev team (cough, Mr. Abramov) for us to hit our highest ratings, yet. So we continue to try and milk that traffic with a reasonable review of Dan Abramov's Twitter thread about the show and a few noteworthy corrections we thought it was fair to talk about for clarity.

During Randy's interviewing stint, he spoke to a good number of firms that had needs for different stacks, but one particular framework stood out: React.
Startups, small firms, and enterprise firms, alike, all seemed to have projects involving flavors of React running in development or production. This week Don and Randy discuss why React has caught fire and if it matters or not.

Don continues to work on his Azure-backed PDF processing application and describes his process to fix a number of blockers. After making progress, Randy asks him about widget pipeline options, like IFTTT and Zapier, and then attempts to invoice Don for the time he was just saved.

In another effort to prevent Don and Randy from working on the same stack, Don wanders off into Microsoft land to build a web app on Azure, and promptly runs into trouble. Through a little troubleshooting, they figure out the problem while discussing the complexities around cloud platforms, coding alone, and ego-driven development.

After a two-week break, we return to discuss how Randy's buying a house and is thinking about all the new tech and gadgets he can add to it. We discuss home automation, the unnecessary features added to some appliances, and the cool stuff being added to others. Don discusses the new Alexa hardware and how his Ring front-door cam was hacked by a wise thief.

Do you practice test-driven development or feel left out of the "cool-kids" club of folks that swear testing is a necessity to develop quality code? We discuss our history with testing, how we haven't always used it, the struggle to learn it, and how everyone tests, regardless of the method chosen.

We discuss the state of development around iPhone and Android development, mainly with using non-native code bases. Randy makes valid complaints about Apple. Don wonders why he isn't allowed to complain about Apple. The subjects of ReactNative, JavaScript, Flutter, Dart, Swift, Java, and Objective-C are discussed, including how Steve Jobs envisioned the Progressive Web App, yet money changed Apple's focus towards native development.
Please leave a rating for This Old App on iTunes!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/this-old-app/id1370196401

We speak with Renee Lahoff, content editor for Moms Can: Code, who began a career years ago as a game developer, left the industry to start a family, and found that a return to the business wasn't as difficult as expected. Topics covered: Unity, Game Jam, Teaching Code Online, and Unix/Terminal Tutorials

After giving birth to her fourth child, and suffering a serious medical issue in the process, Bekah Hawrot Weigel coped by finding a new path in life as a software developer. We talk about how she joined Moms Can: Code, founded by Erica Peterson, and began a new career as both a mother and a developer. We discuss how she got started with Etherium, Solidity, and coaching other folks to follow her path.

We discuss the asynchronous nature of JavaScript, the old-person method of callbacks, the evolution to Promises, and then the shiny new car of Async/Await. We whine about the learning curve of all three approaches and try to figure out why so many blog posts teach it all wrong.

We yell at document datastores to get off our lawns! We talk about the joys of SQL and 50-year-old relational databases we grew up with, trying to make sense of why MongoDB, Firestore, and Dynamo are necessary, and Randy's unhealthy love for Materialized Views. In addition, Lotus 1-2-3 is a database, no matter what Don says.

We talk about Firebase as a new backend tool for a few projects we're working on and cover many of its features, what is weird about it, and why this seems to be a product in which Google is making a big investment.
Hint: It's about the Person, er, people!

In another installment related to the Chasms app, we discuss errors with the prototype, finding the right balance of customer/product fit, and the need to brainstorm without adding requirements to the ideas.

Listen as Don and Randy begin a new side project together from problem/solution explanation, planning, and build approach. We aim to reduce the product scope and target a quicker launch of the prototype.

People (and ourselves) have been asking: Why are you all doing this? What is motivating you to podcast? In this episode, we discuss our motivations for podcasting, our side projects, and why we're doing multiple challenges at the same time.

Mark Thompson gave himself a tough 30-day deadline to build and launch the first version of his app, TotallyStrong.me. Setting a goal gave him tremendous motivation, but also served him with a strong dose of feeling failure. Find out how Mark finally followed through and shipped, despite a self-imposed timeline that both motivated and defeated.